August 6, 2012

Judge Koh Lets Samsung Slide For Publishing Rejected Evidence

Judge Lucy Koh, of Apple v Samsung fame, has now denied a request from Apple to sanction Samsung for releasing rejected evidence to the press hours after opening statements. As court came to a close on Tuesday, Apple called for a sanction against Samsung, saying their lawyer, John Quinn, had tried to taint the jury by releasing the rejected evidence to selected members of the press.

Judge Koh rejected Quinn´s request to include several pieces of evidence – including pictures of old Samsung phones which looked like the iPhone before the iPhone began to ship – for the third time on Tuesday, sending Mr. Quinn to “beg” to have the evidence included. When Koh once again rejected their requests, Samsung sent out this evidence, including interviews, drawings and memos, to select members of the press.

“The Judge´s exclusion of evidence on independent creation meant that even though Apple was allowed to inaccurately argue to the jury that the F700 was an iPhone copy, Samsung was not allowed to tell the jury the full story and show the pre-iPhone design for that and other phones that were in development at Samsung in 2006, before the iPhone,” wrote Samsung in their evidence dump.

“The excluded evidence would have established beyond doubt that Samsung did not copy the iPhone design. Fundamental fairness requires that the jury decide the case based on all the evidence.”

At the close of the court session, Apple informed Judge Koh about Samsung´s actions, saying they should be held in contempt of court for releasing this rejected evidence.

Judge Koh then asked Mr. Quinn to give a write-up explaining his decision to submit the evidence to the court of public opinion.

“Virtually all the information and images in the excluded slides not only appeared in publicly filed documents, but also had already appeared in media reports,” wrote Quinn in his explanation.

Though Koh has decided not to sanction Samsung for their little stunt, she has retained the right to revisit the issue later, should the need arise. According to San Jose Mercury News, Judge Koh came to this decision after asking each juror if they had seen the leaked evidence since they´ve been in court on July 31st .

Each juror said they had followed the judge´s order not to read anything about the case.

In addition to pictures of the Samsung F700, the rejected evidence also included interviews and internal Apple memos about the Sony Style iPhone drawings. After a BusinessWeek article began to circulate around 1 Infinite Loop about some Sony designers who were inspired by the iPod, Jony Ive asked one of their designers to come up with what an iPhone designed by Sony might look like. Samsung had hoped to use these memos as proof that Apple copies other companies, therefore rendering the claim that Samsung copied Apple invalid.

Apple and Samsung will continue their fight against one another for the next few weeks in Judge Koh´s San Jose District Court.

Elsewhere in the world, the two tech titans are duking it out in the Federal Court of Australia in a case concerning multiple patents. This case isn´t set to conclude until October.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will hear a Samsung appeal against the preliminary ban of their Galaxy Nexus smartphone. The preliminary ban was placed on the smartphone for its Siri-like unified search features.